Author: Amy Diaz

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Seth Rogen is a turn-of-the-last-century immigrant to America and a modern app-developer in An American Pickle, a surprisingly sweet New York fairy tale.

Back in the old country, Herschel Greenbaum (Rogen) dreamed of drinking seltzer water, digging holes with shovels that didn’t split in half, not having to dig holes and other elements of a Better Life. His wife Sarah (Sarah Snook) shared this dream and, after Cossacks burned their town, they decided to look for a better life in America. Herschel’s job killing rats at a pickle factory in Brooklyn helped them save enough to buy their own burial plots (Sarah’s particular dream) and might have even afforded the occasional glass of seltzer but one day after being overrun with rats Herschel fell into a pickle vat that was then sealed up in a factory that was then condemned and left to fall apart for the next hundred years. One day in modern Brooklyn, that vat is opened again by kids chasing a drone and out sputters Herschel, well preserved but alive.

After rather delightfully yada-yada-ing the science, the movie gives Herschel, whose beloved Sarah and the child she was carrying when he hit the vat are both long gone, a relative in Ben Greenbaum (also Rogen), Herschel’s great-grandson. Ben picks Herschel up from the hospital and takes him to his Brooklyn apartment. Herschel is at first amazed with Ben’s life — his 25 pairs of socks, his seltzer making machine, his many shoes. But Ben’s career (freelance work on an app called Boop Bop), Ben’s lack of family photos hanging on the wall and his seeming lack of interest in visiting the family burial plot have Herschel wondering what Ben’s life purpose is.

An American Pickle makes a lot of the jokes you expect — the similarity of Herschel’s hat and vest to your modern-day Brooklyn hipster, the Instagrammable nature of the pickles he makes using bottles and cucumbers found in the trash (which he first sells for $4 and later for $14) and the pushcart he sells them from, the way conservative media applauds Herschel when he appears to be speaking his mind. But these are kind of garnish on the actual story, which is sort of a melancholy-tinged rumination on family and legacy and what connects us to our roots. This is the second movie (the other being The Sunlit Night) I’ve seen recently that seems to consider religion and how it helps with expressions of grief. What does religion mean to a modern-day Ben who doesn’t have the societal structure that are part of Herschel’s specific experience with being Jewish? It’s not a huge part of the movie but it’s a nice, thoughtful element to show up in a movie with riffs on silly internet company names and jokes about the vast variety of nut and grain milks.

I liked this oddball movie, which I can’t picture doing great in theaters but seems perfectly suited to the relaxed home viewing experience. Rogen’s performance seems to come from a heartfelt place; he and the movie seem to have empathy for both characters, which makes them feel like multi-dimensional people. B

Rated PG-13 for some language and rude humor, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Brandon Trost with a screenplay by Simon Rich, An American Pickle is an hour and 30 minutes and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is available on HBO Max.

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Two couples on a weekend away have extremely bad luck with their beach house in The Rental, a horror movie that will make you scared of Airbnb-like vacation house rentals and, even more so, two-couple vacations.

Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand) are partners in some kind of business venture, I don’t recall if they say what, except that they both seem kinda terrible so I’m sure their company does something awful, like “disrupting the ice cream experience” or something. Mina is dating Charlie’s brother, Josh (Jeremy Allen White), an Uber-type driver, who has some insecurities about his financial situation. Charlie is married to Michelle, who pretends like she’s cool with how close Charlie and Mina are.

For reasons unknown, Charlie and Mina think it would be a great idea for all four of them to go to a fancy beach house for the weekend. It’s a few hours’ drive to get there and by the time they arrive the property manager, Taylor (Toby Huss), is peeved that they’re late. Mina pre-hates Taylor because she’s pretty sure he’s racist, as he had turned down her request for the house (because, she thinks, of her Middle Eastern last name) but then approved Charlie’s. Perhaps that’s why she kicks off their acquaintance by making a snarky-sounding, classist remark. Later, Taylor makes a joke about Michelle being a peeping Tom (why else, he says, would someone own a telescope in the city) and Mina is miffed that he can just waltz into the house whenever to bring the telescope he offers to lend them.

Fun weekend!

The awkwardness continues as everyone but Michelle, who says she needs sleep for all the fun she seems to think they’re going to have, takes ecstasy and Charlie and Mina end up alone and high in the hot tub. What could go wrong?

The next day, Charlie bails on Michelle’s hiking excursion that she’s so excited about and Mina forgets to take care of Josh’s dog (which they technically weren’t supposed to bring to this pet-free house anyway) and, while we get the occasional creeper POV shot, I was starting to wonder, watching this foursome who all seemed to land somewhere on the “ugh, this guy” scale, if the big reveal would be that nobody was menacing them and that their own guilt and suspicion and insecurity would actually drive them mad. Horror is other people! Of course, I’m mentioning it, so it’s not the big reveal and that was kind of a disappointment.

The movie is really at its best in the first 40 minutes or so, before it nails down what’s actually happening. The “what’s actually happening” felt like a letdown, with diminishing returns right up to the very rushed end. The movie did a decent job of setting up entertainingly unlikeable characters. Had the plot been built on these people and their flaws I feel like that would have been more interesting than just having a story randomly happen to them. In its first half, The Rental had some fun with its clueless rich people and maybe the movie reached B- levels of entertainment. But the off-the-shelf horror it turned into was solidly C- at most. So C?

Rated R for violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexuality by the MPA, according to filmratings.com. Directed by Dave Franco with a screenplay by Dave Franco and Joe Swanberg, The Rental is an hour and 28 minutes long and distributed by IFC Films. It is available for rent.

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

An enterprising duo finds money in baked goods in First Cow.

Otis Figowitz (John Magaro) is, as his nickname “Cookie” suggests, the cook for a hunting expedition in the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s (Wikipedia says 1820). While searching for mushrooms and other edible fare to add to the provisions for the hangry trappers, he meets King-Lu (Orion Lee), originally from China. When they first meet, King-Lu is naked and hiding from a party of Russian trappers. Cookie gives King-Lu some food and takes care of him for a day or so while he recuperates from days on the run.

Later, after Cookie has been paid for the hunting expedition, he meets King-Lu in the small town (a bar, some houses, a thoroughfare where people sell all manner of things). King-Lu takes Cookie to the small shack where he’s set up a home. They hang out for a while, talking about future plans (maybe a farm for King-Lu, maybe a hotel and bakery for Cookie) and eventually about food. A cow has recently been brought to the area by the local rich guy, Chief Factor (Toby Jones), and Cookie has seen it hanging out in the meadow. What’s the harm in borrowing a little milk late at night?

Cookie makes a kind of fried biscuit with the first batch of stolen-milk-enhanced batter. King-Lu sees opportunity in these non-hardtack foodstuffs. Cookie makes a sweeter batch of what he calls oily cakes, which have kind of a doughnut-y appearance, and quickly sells out of them in the town’s thoroughfare, with King-Lu even helping along a bidding war for the last cake. They sneak in for another nighttime milking of the cow and the next day produce even more oily cakes (cooked on the spot), leading to a line of eager customers and cake-embellishments like a shaving of cinnamon.

The cakes are, I guess, the talk of the town and Chief Factor shows up to try one, leading Cookie to worry that he will eventually guess at the ingredients. Factor asks for Cookie to make an even more elaborate dessert for an upcoming tea party and King-Lu and Cookie find themselves trying to judge exactly how far they can take their criminal baking endeavor: they want to sock away enough money to chase their dreams but get out before they are caught.

There is a watchfulness about this movie — watching Cookie look for mushrooms or fry up oily cakes, watching other people in the town sell their goods, watching people go about their day. The movie takes the time to look around at the world this story is set in and what it maybe loses in momentum it gains in texture. There isn’t a lot to this movie in terms of events but there is a lot of richness, a lot of giving us the feeling of what a thing is like — a dirty bar, a spot in the woods or even the friendship between these two men, which is a truly lovely element of this story. This movie is the ultimate show-not-tell and it is able to immerse you in its world and in its characters without romanticizing the harsh realities of its time. A

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Kelly Reichardt with a screenplay by Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt (based on the novel The Half-Life by Jon Raymond), First Cow is two hours and two minutes long and distributed by A24. The movie is available for rent or purchase.

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Take the musical numbers from the Trolls animated movies and divide them by a Spinal Tap’s “Stonehenge” sensibility and add an earnest Will Ferrell plus Dan Stevens’ dodgy Russian accent (but impressive willingness to go all in) and what you have equals Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, a new comedy on Netflix.

I feel like Ferrell, who stars here and has a writing credit, probably really likes the annual Eurovision Song Contest and wants to find some way of introducing its glorious pop-song ABBA-ness to an American audience. And that actually sounds like a great idea. The competition — which I have never watched but has always sounded to me like the best possible mash-up of American Idol and the Olympics — has been available in America only recently. I hope when it comes back (this year’s contest was canceled), Americans can view it with ease; it feels like exactly the kind of all-ages-friendly bowl of cheese dip that we’re all going to need in our lives. I watched a highlights reel from the 2019 finale and I am sold on this whole deal, don’t change one sparkly bit of it. (It looks like full versions of some years’ final shows are also available on eurovision.tv and now that I know that I suspect my productivity will nosedive.)

So, getting Americans interested in the Eurovision Song Contest? Worthy goal. But are enough people really sufficiently aware of the Eurovision Song Contest that, for example, the many Eurovision-related cameos (which I could identify as cameos because of the way the movie shot and introduced them, not because I knew who anybody was) resonate or that specific jokes about Eurovision register?

Without that layer, what you have is Will Ferrell as Lars Erickssong, a very middle-aged man living in a small town in Iceland who has spent most of his life trying to get a song in the Eurovision competition. He is so focused on this that he has never even pursued a romance with obviously-hot-for-him Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), his friend since childhood and his partner in the band Fire Saga. Sigrit is happy to follow Lars in his dreams, though she writes her own songs and does wish they’d maybe also find time to have a baby.

Due to a series of horrible (but lucky for Lars and Sigrit) events, Fire Saga finds itself as Iceland’s Eurovision competitor. Russia’s competitor Alexander Lemtov (Dan Stevens) and his friend Mita (Melissanthi Mahut), Greece’s competitor, have a better shot at winning the competition than Fire Saga and yet the duo seems to enjoy messing with the team dynamic of Fire Saga, which, with its special effects and iffy wardrobe choices, seems to be doing just fine sabotaging itself.

At two hours and three minutes, Fire Saga is at least 35 minutes too long. At times the movie feels more like a collection of extra material for a Saturday Night Live Eurovision sketch than a tightly plotted narrative. It is at its best when the too-old Lars is trying to sell a Viking power ballad or the enjoyably dippy Sigrit is talking to elves — or when it’s just showing us Eurovision. More Eurovision, would have been my studio note. A song-mash-up featuring real-life Eurovision people is charming and irresistible and joyfully silly in the best sense.

In yet another example of grading on a serious curve, this movie is acceptable entertainment because (if you have Netflix) you don’t have to pay any extra money to watch it and because you can feel when it’s slowing down and time your snack runs and phone-checking accordingly. B-

Rated PG-13 for crude sexual material including full nude sculpture, some comic violent images and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by David Dobkin with a screenplay by Will Ferrell and Andrew Steele, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is somehow two hours and three minutes long and is available on Netflix.

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

Dave Bautista is another tough guy befriending a kid (see also: The Rock, John Cena, Arnold Schwarzenegger) in My Spy, a movie once bound for theaters but now on Amazon Prime.

JJ (Bautista) is a tough guy CIA agent who is finding the light touch required for successful spy-ery more difficult than the straightforward butt-kicking of being an Army Ranger. You’re actually not supposed to kill everybody and walk away from the explosions without looking back, explains his boss (Ken Jeong), and thus JJ and his fan-girl tech person Bobbi (Kristen Schaal) are given the low-priority assignment of keeping an eye on Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley), the widow of a former arms dealer. Her brother-in-law, Marquez (Greg Bryk), is still active in the selling-nukes-to-bad-guys game so JJ and Bobbi watch Kate and her daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman), who are attempting to adjust after a recent move to Chicago.

While Kate seems more like a harried nurse and single mom than a woman who has any knowledge of her late husband’s business, Sophie, who is 9, has some solid stealthiness skills. She sneaks up on JJ and Bobbi and records enough of a conversation between the two of them that she can blow their cover. Instead of telling her mom, though, she decides to blackmail JJ into doing things for her, such as taking her to an ice skating rink and teaching her spy stuff. When her mom first sees Sophie with JJ, Kate gives JJ a swift knee to the sensitive spy equipment but Sophie explains that JJ is their new upstairs neighbor and helped her with some bullies. Seeing the possibilities in JJ beyond just his abilities to rent ice skates and teach her to defeat a lie detector, Sophie arranges for JJ and Kate to bump into each other a few times until Kate asks JJ out.

This movie is rated PG-13 and my guess is that this is largely due to the early sequence of JJ killing a couple dozen henchmen, including one whose head goes flying. Common Sense Media pegs it at ages 10 and up and while I might not go that young I think “lightweight family action comedy” is what this movie is for families where the youngest viewers are middle school and up.

And as that, it’s fine. Bautista has the “gruff guy with a good heart” thing ready to go. He maybe isn’t quite as winning as Dwayne Johnson but he’s probably as good, in his own way, as John Cena. His interactions with Coleman’s Sophie feel right for each character — the movie lets Sophie seem enough like a human child that you can just sort of go with the plot, no matter how silly it gets.

I’m not sure how I would have responded to this movie in a theater; the faults of something like this seem to stand out when a movie is on a big screen and has required you to show up at a place on time and pay for popcorn. But as an at-home offering, the low barrier to viewing matches the “light chuckle” level of comedy just fine. B-

Rated PG-13 for action/violence and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Peter Segal with a screenplay by Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, My Spy is an hour and 39 minutes long and distributed by Amazon Studios. It is available on Amazon Prime.

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

U.S. Army soldiers operating in a remote corner of Afghanistan find themselves under attack in The Outpost, which is based on a true story told, among other places, in a book called The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor written by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The movie takes place at what is eventually called Camp Keating, after Capt. Benjamin Keating (Orlando Bloom), the outpost’s commander as the movie opens. It doesn’t take military expertise to understand that this outpost is a bad scene — it is surrounded on three sides by mountains, putting the outpost and its personnel at the bottom of a bowl. Taliban soldiers can easily find a position on the mountains from which they can take easy shots at fighters throughout the camp. And they do, nearly every day, we’re told. For a while, the tension of bullets (and later mortars) entering the camp at any moment relaxes only at night because the Taliban fighters don’t have night vision.

We meet many of the soldiers who man this outpost, attempting to build relationships with the local population. What feels like oodles of people are introduced with on-screen IDs and we learn bits of information about lives back home. Ultimately, the men we probably spend the most time with are Specialist Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones), Lt. Andrew Bundermann (Taylor John Smith) and Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha (Scott Eastwood). The camp has a series of commanding captains, whom we also meet, each of whom has a different leadership style that presents a different set of challenges; their introductions serve as sort of chapters to the story as the movie builds to what we’re told from the beginning is definitely coming: the big one. That is how the soldiers refer to the inevitable attack by overwhelming numbers of Taliban using the advantage of the mountains to attempt to overrun the camp.

By the end of The Outpost, I completely understood all the storytelling decisions made in this story, which runs a little more than two hours and begins the most intense action (the predicted “big one”) a little more than an hour in. I feel like there was a version of this movie that could have slid in at fewer than 90 minutes and, similar to Tom Hanks’ recent Greyhound (which The Outpost sort of reminded me of), confined itself to the core of the fight. But Greyhound’s source material is a novel based on World War II events and this is a true story featuring soldiers who are real people, alive and deceased, with still living parents and spouses and children, and I understand why the movie puts such emphasis on having the audience learn everybody’s name and get at least a slice of backstory even when it feels like information overload.

The movie also stays away from having an overt point of view about the war and the larger politics involved. Instead, its criticism is pointed at military decisions made in reference to the outpost from its very existence in this (as the movie describes at the end) “obviously indefensible” location to various bad-call requests and decisions made by military officialdom elsewhere. The story’s focus is on the men, their bravery in their defense of each other and their ability to think on their feet and adapt when what seems like an unwinnable fight begins. B

Rated R for war violence and grisly images, pervasive language, and sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Rob Lurie with a screenplay by Eric Johnson, The Outpost is two hours and three minutes long and distributed by Screen Media Ventures. The movie is available for rent.